The Tale of Hikari
by Seinaru Kibou no Tenshi
Summary: CH 8: Misei In the Heian Era, the bonds of karma draw a lady and a peasant together, but the forces of society are equally strong. . . .
1. Asagao: Morning Glory

_The characters belong to Toei and I'm making no profit from this piece. _

_Here is the piece set in the Heian Era that I have been threatening for quite some time, inspired by both The Tale of Genji__ and the autobiography of Shikibu Murasaki that Lisa Dalby wrote. Both are well worth reading, and, if you enjoy this piece, may I recommend them as superior versions of this?_

_I don't want this story to get bogged down in footnotes about Heian Era culture. I find it a fascinating period of history, but I don't want this narrative to become a lecture. However, for those who want to know more, I will include my summaries of some of the various reference sources I used to research this story as the last chapter. It will be updated as my research needs dictate too. If you still have questions, feel free to put them in your reviews and I'll be certain to address them in my notes at the beginning. _

_Thanks to Keri for betaing. She doesn't even watch Digimon Adventure __and said she'd beta for me, because she knows a lot about the Heian Era, especially its fashions. So, if it's accurate, it has a lot to do with her. _

_Otherwise, it only remains to say . . . Enjoy the story! _

_***_

THE TALE OF HIKARI

CHAPTER ONE

ASAGAO: MORNING GLORY

_Uncertain whether it happened or not - dimly-perceived, morning glory flowers. _

_~ Murasaki Shikibu_

Both the leaves and the sky were turning red on the morning when Hikari met the man to whom the bonds of karma would draw her, although she did not know it at the time and would not have believed it even if she had. Of all the household, she was the only one who was outdoors that early. Her father was cloistered in his study, writing reports for the government. Her brother had returned late the previous night and was sleeping off his evening's debauchery in his quarters. Her father's first wife, Hikari's mother, was reading in her Northern pavillion, while his second was with child and had taken to lying in late in the morning until the worst of the sickness had left her. 

Her solitude did not worry Hikari in the slightest. In a house that was full of people, most of whom disliked each other, it was not unpleasant to have some time by herself. She enjoyed walking alone in the autumn garden, listening to the cricket's morning song, seeing the flowers unfurl on their stems, enjoying the crispness of the cooling air on her skin, watching the sky fade from gold to blue. It allowed her pretend that they were not in what amounted to exile. 

As perfectly composed and planned as if it had been a painting, the garden was one of the few touches of refinement her father allowed himself, despite his posting to an obscure province for incurring some imperial disfavour or other. She still did not know the exact circumstances that had led her father to be sent to a place that was little more than a fishing village and a few rice-fields. She wondered if it had anything to do with him rejecting the notoriously tasteless daughter of a wealthy noble as a third wife. Regardless, he said that the soul had to learn to find contentment in adversity, but she longed for the elegance of Miyako more than she had words to say. (1)

As she roamed through the elegant garden, she let her mind wander across the _ri to Miyako, like a goose flying through the grey sky. If she were there, she would be sitting with her friends in the autumn coolness of a garden. They would be combing each other's long hair, and coming up with the sort of light, pleasant poetry with which they had used to pass hours. Or she would be exchanging elegant, oblique words with a male admirer from behind a screen, the carefully-chosen colours of her robes showing to best effect, the smile on her face hidden. _

Hikari sighed despairingly. How would she get a husband worthy of her in this place? The only men apart from her father and brother were no men at all: peasants with their rough voices and hands. Her father would have to write to Miyako to arrange an engagement, but how would he persuade a rich and handsome noble that it would be worth his while to marry the obscure daughter of an obscure provincial official? She had a little beauty and a little charm, she thought despondently, but not enough to make up for such a defect. She would spend the rest of her life in the provinces, without even an opportunity for an intrigue with a man who might slip into her bed one night and be gone by morning. She knew she should resign herself to dying a virgin, as untouched as the Vestals of Ise. 

With those bleak thoughts on her mind, she stepped through a cluster of maples and froze in her steps. As if her imaginings had come strangely to life, there was a man standing in the middle of their garden and bending to inspect a vine of morning glory. His back was to her and he held the stem of one of the white flowers between his thumb and forefinger, as if he were trying to memorise its every detail. His single-layered robe and _bakama of undyed cloth marked him as a peasant, while his head and feet were bare. His hair was the gold of fallen autumn leaves. What was a peasant doing in their garden? How had he gotten past the wall? _

Hikari suddenly realised that she did not even have a fan behind which to hide her face. Everyone knew that peasants were only slightly above animals. Like beasts, they ate and drank, they worked the fields, they rutted. It took the least matter to inflame them. The fall of her many-layered robes would be enough, let alone her bare face. Hastily, she turned to go back to her house, but her feet got caught up in her trailing robes and she fell heavily onto the ground.

Loud as the crack of a whip, a branch snapped beneath her. Wincing, she rubbed her ankle, which had twisted beneath her and was now aching. There was no way even a dull-brained peasant could have failed to notice the sound and to recognise it for what it was. Her worst suspicions were confirmed, as she heard footsteps coming quickly towards her through the grass. Panic rose hot and sharp in her chest. She had to get back to the house, or else she would fall prey to whatever lust he might conceive when he saw her. 

Gathering up the many layers of her robe, she clambered to her feet. When she put weight on her injured foot, her ankle throbbed as if a hot coal were being pressed against her skin. Painfully, as quickly as she could manage, she started hobbling back towards the house. She could see it rising at the end of the garden, promising safety from her pursuer. If she could only . . . . 

"Lady Yagami?" a man's voice exclaimed from behind her, and she knew it was too late. He had caught her, and would doubtless proceed to do whatever he wanted to her. Realising flight was futile, she slowly turned to face the peasant. He was younger than she had first imagined, barely more than a boy. His eyes were the steady blue of a lake at dawn. If she had not been so afraid, she would have thought them beautiful.  

"Stay away from me," she said in as steady a voice as she could manage,  "My brother will kill you if you touch me or offer any violence to me." 

"Do you think I am an animal?" he sounded irritated. His accent was uncultured but not unpleasant to the ear, even though it was nothing like the smooth, modulated tones of her father or brother, "Do you think I would take advantage of you in that way?"

Hikari felt her cheeks grow warm, and wished she had bothered to paint on the concealing layer of rice-flour that morning. She had been thinking that only a few moments ago. _Everyone knows that the peasants are animals, though. They can't help it. They're born to serve, and they have few of the civilising influences of art, poetry or music to improve them. She wondered whom she was trying to convince._

"Why are you here if not to take advantage of me?" she demanded, feeling obscurely angry. Nobles did not have to justify themselves to peasants, "Or have you come to rob my father's house?"

The young man ran a slightly grimy hand through his hair, "Actually, I came to see your gardens." 

"Our gardens?" she repeated incredulously. 

"Yes, I came to draw flowers. Your father, Lord Yagami, has an exceptional garden. Some of his flowers are new to me." 

"You came to draw flowers?" Hikari echoed, realising what a fool she sounded but not caring. This was getting more ridiculous by the moment. The only plants peasants appreciated were those with which they filled their bellies. The stately wisteria, the ephemeral beauty of the cherry-blossom, the golden glory of the kerria-rose were all the same to them - they were not rice or barley. And they certainly did not draw them, "You are lying."

"I am not," he sounded offended, "Come and see for yourself. My drawing stuff is just through those trees. I left it when I came to check if you needed help. " 

She stared at the peasant in open disbelief. Did he think her a foolish girl who did not know how the world worked beyond the latticed window or the screens-of-state? Did he think she knew nothing about the things which went on between men and women, the things which women whispered to each other, the things about which men laughed and boasted over their cups of _o-__sake? Through the thin walls of their home, she had often heard her brother joking about his conquests with his friends. She knew what would happen to her, if she went with him. She was only surprised he had not had his way with her already._

"Leave our garden now, or I will call my father," her voice shook, despite her best efforts, "I know he will find your tales even less convincing than I do." 

"Can you make it to the house by yourself, Lady Yagami?" he sounded concerned.

"Leave!" 

"I'm sorry if I startled you. I didn't . . . ."

"Now! Or I'm calling my father!"

With an appropriately deep bow, the peasant turned from her and disappeared through the trees. He moved with a loose, long-limbed grace, like a cat walking along a wall. She waited for him to go, before she let herself sink against the trunk of the nearest maple. She was breathing heavily, and her entire body trembled like a dry leaf in an autumn breeze. Inexplicably, she felt a strange shame for how she had treated the boy. She had not only screamed at him like the unfortunate wife in _The Tongue-Cut Sparrow_, but she had treated him as if he had been an attacker when he had only shown her care and compassion. He had not even tried to touch her against her will, let alone to force her to the ground. And that shame only served to make her angrier.

At least her ankle had stopped aching, she thought grimly, as she set back up to the house. 

***

That evening, when Hikari opened the shutters of her room to admit the night air, she found a sheet of paper lying crumpled on the grass outside her room. She picked it up with an impatient sigh, recognising it as one of Taichi's discards from the writing on it. Her brother had no care for the cost or the scarcity of paper, and their father indulged him in a vain attempt at making a poet out of him. He left sheets scattered about the landscape, as if they were autumn leaves or goose feathers. She took it upon herself to gather them up and to reuse them. She would practise the lotus sutra on the back of this one, she thought, as she carefully smoothed it out with the palm of her hand. 

Her eyes widened slightly, when she saw that someone had already used the back of the sheet. On it was the most perfect sketch of morning glory that she had ever seen. One of the trumpets was just beginning to open, wrinkled edges still curling inwards slightly, while the other bud was folded as tightly as a baby's crying face. She lifted the sheet to her face, and the faint, acrid smell of ash came off of it. It was not a drawing in ink, but charcoal. It had to have been done by the peasant boy she had met in the garden that morning. 

She had not thought about their brief encounter, except in the vague, distant way that she thought about dreams. She had decided that it could never have happened. No peasant would have spoken to her so disrespectfully, or would have made the outrageous claim to be sketching flowers. Yet this drawing was proof that it had - this drawing, which was better than anything her or her brother could have produced for all their upbringing and education. Hikari was intrigued in spite of herself. He could not have done it himself, no peasant was capable of creating something so beautiful, but from where could he have gotten it? 

"Hikari, what is that you are holding?" the girlish voice of her father's second wife asked from behind her. Stiffening, Hikari slipped the sketch into the broad sleeve of her robes. It wasn't like she were doing anything wrong by looking at the sketch the peasant had made her or like anything improper had happened between them that morning, but it would give rise to the sort of awkward questions she preferred to avoid. She put an innocent smile on her face as she turned to face the older woman. 

Orimoto Izumi was a small, pretty woman, who always struck Hikari as being more child than woman in her eagerness and impulsiveness. It was hard to think that she would be a mother soon, when she seemed like she should be playing with dolls. Her waist had not yet begun to thicken, and her robes still fell on her in elegant lines. They were a fashionable combination of reds, browns and yellows that imitated the colours of the season. Her make-up was equally elegant - her entire face was white, apart from the safflower-pinkness of her lips and the painted, black brows high on her forehead. Her teeth had been blackened too, and shone like fine lacquer.

Beside her, with her face bare and her teeth artlessly white, Hikari felt as much an uncultured peasant as the boy who had drawn the flowers for her. 

"Another sheet that my brother cast off in pursuit of perfection," she replied lightly, "I was going to practise my lotus sutra on the back of it." 

"It looked like a painting from where I was standing and a remarkably fine one too, but I must have been mistaken." 

"It was one of Taichi's drawings," she lied easily, "His skills with the brush are improving daily, since our father insisted he practise." 

Izumi smiled, "Your father is a talented painter in his own right. I am glad to see his son is following in his footsteps." 

Hikari returned the woman's smile with one of her own, wondering what she was doing in her quarters. Izumi had never seemed to want to befriend her in the past, keeping her own counsel to the point of standoffishness. She did not hold it against her - she knew her father's new wife was unhappy, and solitude was the only way she could handle her misery. Sometimes, she woke to hear her crying at night through the thin screens, or saw wet streaks in the carefully applied rice-flour on her face. It was not hard to guess the reason for it. Someone as beautiful and stylish as Izumi could not have dreamt of being married to an obscure provincial official, of having to live many days' journey away from the society life of Miyako. 

Still, she thought with some resentment, at least Izumi had a husband. At least her beauty was not going to waste like a flower growing on the peak of a high and rocky mountain, where only the sun saw it and only the crickets remarked upon it. (2) The only gift she had been given by a man for months was this sketch of morning-glory, and that had been the gift of a peasant with whom she could clearly have no future. The thought of a coarse peasant courting her with delicate poems and carefully-chosen tokens of favour was almost ridiculous enough to make her smile in spite of her hopeless situation. 

Casting politeness aside for the moment, she asked, "Did you come to see me just to talk, or is there a purpose to your visit?" 

"We received a message from Miyako this morning, while you were in the gardens. I meant to tell you earlier, but could not find you." 

Excitement fluttered in her stomach. Maybe it was a message from a man with whom her father had arranged a match. Maybe her situation was not as irreperable as she had thought, "About?" 

"Tachikawa Mimi sent word that she is coming to see you in a few days," Izumi explained, "She was a friend of yours from when you lived in Miyako, right?"

Pushing down the slight disappointment that it was not an offer of marriage, Hikari smiled at her, "Yes! One of my best! It will be good to see her . . . but why is she making such a long trip?" 

"Doubtless, you will learn the reason when she arrives," she said with a philosophical shrug, "In the meantime, get yourself ready for dinner. We are eating in the garden beneath the cedars." 

****

TO BE CONTINUED IN 'A VISITOR FROM A THOUSAND _RI AWAY'_

***

NOTES: 

(1) Not Inoue Miyako, obviously! Miyako was the old name for Kyoto, and the capital during the Heian era. 

(2) I usually hate to point out subtle allusions, but you really won't get this one unless you know the _kanji reading for Takeru's name is "high mountain" or "peak" and very few people are aware of that fact. Mainly because Toei usually uses the __katakana for most of their names. . . ._

***


	2. Koko Kara Senri OKyakusan: A Visitor Fro...

**THE TALE OF HIKARI**

**CHAPTER 2**

**KOKO KARA SENRI O-KYAKU-SAN: A VISITOR FROM A 1000 RI AWAY**

Examining the autumn leaves in her hands, Hikari headed towards the collection of blinds and screens that made up her sleeping quarters. She had an inexplicable urge to paint, and the leaves would provide a simple, subject matter for that as well as a colourful note in her room. She hoped she could still remember the strokes. She had not practised her painting for months, and she had never been that skilled at it. It was one of her father's great disappointments that neither of his children had a talent for the art he loved so well. 

Suddenly, she paused, sniffing the air, a frown coming to her face. The room smelt of a delicate, spicy perfume, but it was neither Izumi's nor her mother's. It could not be Mimi's, could it? Her friend was only expected to arrive at their estate the next day. Wheeled wagons travelled slowly along the narrow and twisted tracks of the provinces, and her parents would not have provided any lesser means of transport for their most precious jewel.

"Hello?" she called, and a familiar figure stepped out from behind her screens-of-state. Tachikawa Mimi had not changed at all since she last had seen her. She was still a beautiful, graceful woman who carried herself with a confidence born of the knowledge that all eyes were upon her. Her make-up was impeccably done, and her robes were layered in the most fashionable colours for the season: two layers of maroon above three layers of green with a scarlet undergown to finish it. Pine-tree layers, Hikari recalled the combination was called. 

Her carefully chosen leaves fell forgotten to the floor, "Mimi! Welcome!" 

"Yagami Hikari, you have wasted away to a wraith during your time in these rustic parts!" Mimi exclaimed with her usual forthrightness. 

Hikari crimsoned, thinking it useless to protest that she had only expected Mimi the next day and had been going to prepare herself for her arrival. Mimi's father was an official at court - a favourite of the Emperor - and she had never been to the provinces for more than a few weeks at a time in the heat of summer. She would not understand Hikari's recent apathy to her appearance. In Miyako, no self-respecting woman would walk around without her make-up and with her teeth artlessly unblackened. However, in Miyako, there were more than the eyes of servants and family to admire her beauty. _And the eyes of peasants, a small voice added to her humiliation. _

As much as she would have liked to forget her early morning encounter with the young peasant in her gardens, he had made it impossible for her to do so. Every morning, she found a new sketch lying on the grass outside her window. Most of them were of seasonal themes - pawlonia leaves, dragonflies, chrysanthemums, sparrows, rice being harvested - but others were delicately observed and executed sketches of fishermen on the shore or women playing with their children. If the thought weren't patently ridiculous, she would have believed her words had bruised his pride and he was sending the pictures to her to stir her into a sense of shame about her hasty words. She wished he would stop leaving them for her, but she had the uncomfortable feeling that she had come to look forward to his sketches as the only variation in her monotonous days and that she would miss them when they no longer appeared. 

"However, it is nothing that I can't mend," Mimi continued in cheerful tones, "You're fortunate that I brought suitable cosmetics with me. I will send my serving-women to bring them to us." 

"Thank you," Hikari said, thinking it easier to agree than to argue. She knew she could have no use for the beauty treatment in the provinces, but it would not be unpleasant to sit back and allow Mimi to make her into a lady of refinement again, especially as her friend's taste had always been unquestioned among their social circle. She had once worn a daring combination of colours to a concert, and everyone in the city had been clamouring for them the next day. Her incenses too had always taken the prize in any category in which she had entered them. 

After Mimi had dispatched one of her woman to fetch her cosmetics and she had hurried off to bring the case in from the wagon, Hikari asked her, "May I ask what brings you to this province?"  

Her friend smiled brightly and artificially at her, but something like grief flickered in her brown eyes, "I'm not allowed to pay a visit on an old friend?" 

"I'm very glad that you did," Hikari returned her smile, knowing that Mimi was lying to her. She had been in the provinces for almost two years now, and her friend had never come to see her in that time. She couldn't blame her - Mimi was a moth irresistably drawn to live in the bright light of Miyako. Her entertainments, her romantic entanglements, her elegant luxuries, she would have been miserable living without them for even a day. No, she would not have come to this deserted, bleak province for no better reason than a social call, "But I wish you would tell me why you are really here." 

Mimi looked away from her, her eyes sinking to the low table on which Hikari had spread all her writing materials. There were her executions of various sutras; letters written to her friends in the capital that were to go back with Mimi; spontaneous poems that had suggested themselves to her. And the painting that had arrived that morning and that she had not had time to hide. It showed geese winging their way across a wide, grey sea. The whole scene had been done with such delicacy and care that she had almost heard their wild, lonely cry echoing into the sky when she had first seen it. A frown creasing her forehead, Mimi stretched out a hand to take it and Hikari felt herself grow cold, as if the cool of autumn had given way to winter snows already. Mimi was not the only one who had a secret to conceal.

"Hikari, this is charming!" she exclaimed, "It's so natural and fresh. I'm glad to see your time in the provinces hasn't ruined all your taste. Your solitude must have given you time to practise too, because I don't remember you ever being able to draw like this. You must show me others you have done." 

She gave her friend a weak smile, "I'm not the artist." 

"Your father? I've heard that he is a talented artist. His paintings of the great heroes once won a competition for his side, didn't they?"

"Yes, but it's by neither of them."

"An admirer?" Mimi asked significantly, looking at the sketch with new interest, "Like the geese in his painting, maybe he longs to fly across the long _ri to be by your side." _

"And my sleeves are as wet with weeping for him, as if I had trailed them in the sea day and night," Hikari replied in amusement, holding up the trailing sleeves of her robe to show they were quite dry. Whatever that peasant had intended these paintings to be, he could not have meant them to be tokens of love. Thick-brained as peasants were, even he would be aware that a romance between them would be like something from an old Chinese tale; like the tale where the woman fell for her dog and took him for a lover, the bonds of karma transcending all sense of what was decent or natural, "The only tears I shed are because I have no admirers." (1)

"Perhaps you are lucky to be alone," she said, her voice quiet, "Perhaps it is better to live out your life in these provinces where you are as unadmired as any wildflower in the woods." 

Hikari looked at her friend in surprise. She would have thought a moth would sooner hate the light around which it fluttered than Mimi would wish to be away from Miyako and her many male admirers, "Mimi, I'm your friend. I wish you would tell me what's wrong." 

Mimi stared at the picture in her hands without replying. Very gently, she brushed one of the geese with the tip of her finger and it came up black. She looked at her hand with a puzzled frown on her face. Hikari disciplined herself to calmness, although her heart was beating as if it were a live quail caught in the hunter's hand. Mimi kept her secrets, and she would not share hers. 

"Ash," the other woman whispered, "Everything is ash." 

There was a long silence, before her maid re-entered the room. She was carrying a small, delicately carved box in her hands. The wood was wonderfully fragrant, and filled the room with its scent. She placed it in front of Mimi, who set the picture aside and almost managed to smile at Hikari, "Now it is time for my own artistry. Give me a moment to mix up my inks and I shall turn you into a masterpiece." 

***

"Will you play for us, Mimi?" Izumi asked, holding out a _so to her, "Hikari tells me your talent has left the court at Miyako spellbound on more than one occasion." _

The three women were sitting beneath the spreading cedars in the garden of the mansion, the remains of their outdoor meal set to one side. Hikari's face felt stiff and strange with its coating of rice-flour, while her mouth was still bitter with the taste of iron and gallnuts used to blacken her teeth. She had not recognised herself when she had seen herself in the mirror - it had seemed a strange, elegant woman was staring back at her, her painted eyebrows quizzical. 

With a little nod of agreement, Mimi took the _sou in her arms and began to pluck its strings with light fingers. Her sweet, clear voice rose to join the soft sounds of her instrument. It was a lover's lament, where the woman complained she had been waiting for weeks to see the man she loved but the wood-grouse was the only one who came tapping outside her window. When she had finished her song, she set the instrument aside with a little sigh. In the moonlight, Hikari could see tears glittering in her eyes. (2)_

"Mimi, what is wrong?" she asked in concern. 

"Hikari, will you fetch me my wraps? I'm scared of catching cold," Izumi asked with a strange expression on her face. Hikari opened her mouth to protest that the night was dry and warm, but closed it almost immediately. It was a pretext to get rid of her, she realised. Izumi wished to speak to Mimi alone. It was almost certainly about whatever had brought her friend to the provinces. 

Burning with curiosity to hear what they said, Hikari set off towards the house. She could feel Izumi's eyes on her back, watching her, waiting for her to leave before she spoke. She climbed the steps to the main pavilion and turned left as if she were going to her stepmother's apartments, but paused the instant she was out of sight of the gardens. From here, if the night remained still, she would be able to hear every word they spoke. She knew what she was doing was shameful, but she was concerned for Mimi. There was something wrong with her friend, and she needed to know what it was to help her.

"His name was Shibayama Junpei," Izumi said so quietly that Hikari had to struggle to hear her words, "He was the first man I loved, the first man I allowed past my screens of state, the first man I wanted to wed. Unfortunately, he came from a family that was no imperial favourite, and he was only a clerk of the fifth class as a result. When he approached my father to arrange a marriage between the two of us, my father turned him down and forbade me from having anything to do with him. He said he had already arranged a marriage with a provincial official for me, and that I would be leaving for his household in two weeks. It was a good match, my father said, even though I would be his second wife. By that, I knew he meant that this provincial official was wealthy. My family's fortunes had been in trouble for some time, and our only chance of restoring them was for me to wed a rich man," she paused for a long time, and, when she continued, her voice was unsteady, "And I was lucky, Mimi. My husband is a good man - he treats me with great respect and kindness; he allows me my luxuries from Miyako; he does not burden me with . . . with too many visits. But he is not Junpei, and I can never love him." 

"My father also expects me to be pleased," Mimi replied bitterly, "Pleased! To be married to a man three times my age who stinks of the medicines he uses to keep himself off his deathbed, who only sees me as a way to keep up his strength! His visits behind my screen of state . . . Ugh! He doesn't care about me any more than my father does! It's all politics to my father! He's rich and influential, so he'll smooth my brother's climb up the ranks. Shinji might even make the third this year, they say. I hate politics! I hate them! I hate them!" (3)

Mimi was crying for real now; short, angry sobs that sounded as if they were torn from her body. Hikari sank to her knees, heart thudding in her chest, her own eyes damp. So that was the secret that she had been unable to tell her. Beautiful, stylish Mimi was to be married off to a walking corpse of a man, so her worthless brother could have a position he did not deserve. And her stepmother had a secret as well that she could have never guessed: Hikari wondered if her tears at night were for Junpei many _ri away at Miyako. _

For the first time, she was almost glad that her father had not arranged a marriage for her. Her father was a good man, but he was also an ambitious one. She knew he wanted more for Taichi than a life spent in the provinces. He might decide that her happiness in a marriage was less important than securing the good will of a influential man. Marriage was politics, as everyone knew. Love was learnt in the years spent together, if it were learnt at all. 

"Please keep this a secret," Mimi said, when her breathing had slowed and her sobs had quietened, "I don't want Hikari to know. She . . . she doesn't need to know." 

"I promise," Izumi replied, "Besides, she will know soon enough what it is like." 

"Her father is organising a match for her?" 

"No," she said, and, despite everything she had just thought, Hikari felt a cold knot of disappointment form in the pit of her stomach. She couldn't understand why her father was delaying. She was of marriageable age, and any alliance with a man at Miyako could only serve to improve her family's positions. At this rate, it seemed her fears about dying a virgin were not entirely unjustified. She might as well shave her head, put on the holy robe and recede into the obscurity of a nunnery.

"But he will have to arrange one soon enough," Izumi continued, "For her sake, I hope it is with a good and kind man whom she can love." 

"And a handsome one," Mimi added with a wistful sigh, "I wanted to marry a handsome man." 

"Junpei was handsome." 

In the garden, the soft sound of the _sou began to rise to the moon. It was the loneliest sound that Hikari had ever heard. _

***

TO BE CONTINUED IN 'THE POETRY COMPETITION'

***

NOTES:

(1) The Chinese tales enjoyed by the Japanese were often very lurid and improbable. The tale of the woman who fell in love with her dog is actually a genuine Chinese tale, and is recorded in all its detail in _The Tale of Murasaki. The Roman had a similar attitude to Greek tales._

(2) For the two people who don't know this, AiM, Mimi's _seiyuu, is a J-Pop star by trade and has the most lovely voice. I was listening to her singing while writing parts of this, actually. _

(3) During the Heian Era, there was a medical belief drawn from Chinese religious texts that, if a man brought a woman to orgasm but did not himself ejaculate, it would be good for his strength and vigour. It was drawn from the whole principle of yin and yang, of course. And the ranks are just different ranks in the civil service, distinguished by different colour robes. Obviously, the higher you are, the more power and prestige you have. 


	3. Utaawase: The Poetry Contest

THE TALE OF HIKARI  
CHAPTER 3  
THE POETRY COMPETITION  
  
Glad that the semi-opaque veils of her travelling costume hid her face, Hikari murmured polite appreciation of another peasant's attempt at a poem, as he bowed in front of her and retreated back into the crowd. Her father sat a little way to her right, resplendent in some of his finest robes, flanked by his two wives. He disguised his distaste at the crude poems better than she could. He had a smile on his face and was nodding graciously. Completing their party, her brother sat next to their mother and he hid his impatience even less well that she did. His foot tapped the ground and his mouth was twisted in a scowl.  
  
Honestly, she thought, watching these rustics ape city was too unbearable for words. It was like watching a cat try to sing or a dog to dance. It made her long for Miyako where the most brilliant and elegant would compose poems over lacquered bowls of o-sake.   
  
It did not help that Mimi had left to return to the capital over a week ago, taking back with her all the grace and refinement that she had brought with her. They had parted with many pretty poems and promises that they would write to each other constantly, but she knew Mimi would not keep her word. A wife had other duties besides writing idle gossip to her friends, especially after she had her first child. Hikari still blackened her teeth and made up her face, but she knew she would not continue with those chores for too much longer. Like a flower growing on a shore of salt and rock, her beauty would wilt and fade.   
  
With a little sigh, she settled back into her chair and waited for the next peasant to come and inflict his composition on them. She felt a strange, little shock when she saw it was the boy she had met in the garden. She had spent so many hours thinking about him and his paintings that it seemed odd to see him in the flesh. Now that she could examine him at her leisure, even though it was through the mist of the veil's fabric, she saw that he was as attractive as one of his paintings. His eyes were the colour of still lake that reflected the sky, while his hair was as golden as sunlight. It made her feel uneasy. It seemed wrong for a peasant to be that handsome.   
  
He bowed deeply to them as etiquette dictated, then recited the verse: 'Surprised at grey dawn; white morning-glory blooming in the pale light.' He did not glance once at her, but his implication would have been clear even without the play on her name. Even as she made polite sounds of appreciation, Hikari felt her cheeks grow warm with embarrassment and outrage. How dare he recite such an impudent poem in front of her? The paintings he left her were bad enough, but this verse stretched the bounds of belief. This could not continue. She would speak to him after the contest.   
  
"Charming," her father said sincerely. As furious as she was with the boy, Hikari had to admit that it was. Like his paintings with ash and water, his poem was simple and unrefined, but charming. People at Miyako might even praise its freshness - innovation was prized as much as tradition at a court that quickly grew bored with its entertainments. He bowed gratefully, and stepped back into the crowd.   
  
Hikari listened to the rest of the peasants with growing impatience. It seemed like there was no end to the terrible poems that they had composed on autumnal themes. Plants, birds, animals, the elements, it seemed that there was no seasonal marker that did not form part of a rustic verse. She grudgingly had to admit that not one of them came close to the charm or wit of the impudent poem the boy had recited to her. At last, however, the final peasant made his way back into the group of onlookers and contestants.   
  
Her father stood and inclined his head to them, "Thank you for doing us the honour of inviting us to your contest. Nothing could have been more delightful or enjoyable," Taichi made a sour face at that, "I have decided that the prize should go to the man who recited the poem about the morning glory."   
  
When he had been invited to judge the contest, her father had volunteered the prize as well. It was an elegantly painted scroll depicting one of the Tales of Ise that he had illustrated himself during his stay in the provinces. The cover was a rich scarlet and the rollers were sandalwood. Hikari had thought it inappropriate for a peasants' poetry contest - a brace of fish or a basket of rice would be more to their taste - but the young man seemed delighted by it. He bowed to Lord Yagami before tucking it carefully into one of the folds of his garment. (1)  
  
After that, the contest was over and their party scattered. Lord Yagami accompanied Izumi and her mother back to their home, while Taichi gathered together a group of young men to play an impromptu game of kemari. After telling her father that she wished to walk alone for a while and checking that her brother was suitably distracted, she set off after the young peasant. He did not head back to the village with the rest of them, but made for a small stream that murmured through the pinewoods. There, he seated himself on the edge of a rock and unrolled the scroll in his hands. With one finger, he traced her father's delicate brushstrokes, as if wondering how to duplicate them himself.   
  
When she reached him at last - her layered robes made walking difficult and slow - she cleared her throat to let him know that she was there. Her stomach suddenly felt like moths were flying around in it, and she did not know why. He lifted his head, a surprised expression coming to his face, "Lady Yagami? If you want to walk here, I'll leave . . . ."  
  
"To write another poem about it?" her words were blunt, but there was no point in being subtle or arch with a peasant, "Dazzled by its light, I left the stream to whisper its secrets to the sun alone, perhaps?"   
  
"The sun is pale today, hidden by the clouds. I don't fear being dazzled," he replied with a little smile. Hikari stared at him in disbelief. Peasants were simply not meant to think this way. The poem was as impudent as it was clever. Beneath her concealing travelling-veil, she was wearing lavender and blue-green robes that day, layered elegantly in the combination called hagi. (2)  
  
She forced down her anger and spoke as calmly as she could manage, "I wish to speak to you about what happened in the garden the other morning."   
  
"I'm sorry for startling you," he said honestly, "When I heard someone fall, my first thought was to help whoever it was. I didn't expect it to be you, and I didn't expect you to be . . . scared of me."   
  
Giving in to the weight of her robes, she sat on a flat rock opposite from him, "Did I give you offence by being afraid of you?"   
  
"Did you truly think I would rape you?" he asked in return, then sighed when she did not reply, "I'm not that sort of man, Lady Yagami."   
  
"I know," she said quietly, "I am alone with you now and at your mercy. My brother would not hear me if I called for help."  
  
"So you are," he sounded surprised and a little pleased. She looked across at him, fear fluttering in her belly again. Perhaps she had been a fool to seek him out in this deserted wood with no one but the crickets to hear her screams. A few paintings, an impudent poem, were not enough reason to put herself at risk like this. He had just said that he would not take advantage of her and she wanted to believe him, but what man would confess to being enough of a brute to force a woman against her will? Then, he smiled at her and she felt her fear dissolve. It was the open, sweet smile of a child with no concept of evil, "Your apology is accepted, Lady Yagami."   
  
"Thank you."  
  
He nodded his dismissal but said, "Did your lord father paint this scroll he gave me?"   
  
"Yes," she replied, "He was considered a talented artist back in the city. His scrolls won painting competitions for his side more than once."   
  
"You must think my paintings are hopelessly crude by comparison," he ran a caressing hand over the cylinder in his hand, "They're nothing like his."   
  
Suddenly, Hikari remembered in horror that she was meant to be furious at him for his impudence. She did not know how he had done it, but he had managed to disarm her completely. He had even managed to wheedle an apology out of her that she had not meant to give. If she scolded him now for his actions, she would seem as changeable and churlish as an autumn storm that darkened a clear sky. All that remained to her was to be gracious in defeat, "My father would be delighted if I could paint half as well as you do. Your work is beautiful."   
  
"I could teach you," he suggested, "I would be happy to do so."   
  
Hikari looked at him in shock. The young peasant seemed sincere enough in his offer. There was no trace of mockery in his clear, blue eyes or in his charmingly accented voice. Yet, if a fish had leapt out of the stream and said he would teach her how to breathe water, she could not have been more surprised. After a long silence, she said, "And what would I teach you in return? How would I repay you?"   
  
"There's no need to repay me," he replied, "However, if you insist, I want to learn to read and write. You can teach me that, while I teach you how to draw."   
  
"Read and write?"   
  
"Yes," he looked at her as if defying her to comment, "So, what do you say, Lady Yagami?"   
  
"I only know a few Chinese characters, I'm afraid, but I'll teach you them along with our native script."   
  
As he nodded his agreement, she hoped she had made the right decision. There was no real harm in their arrangement: she might as well pass the long, dull hours in the provinces improving her skills with a brush, and teaching him the fundamentals of literacy would not make him less effective in the fields. However, she had a feeling that her father would not approve of it, nor would any future husband she might chance to get.   
  
He was a peasant and she was a noblewoman. Their worlds were supposed to be delineated and separated by barriers thicker and more opaque than any screen of state. They might overlap for brief moments at festivals and contests such as the one she had attended that day, but they were never supposed to be together in this way. She truly hoped she had made the right choice in this matter.   
  
"In that case . . . ." she paused, realising she did not know his name and slightly embarrassed that she had not thought to ask him before this, "If I am to teach you, I need to know your name."   
  
"Takeru." (3)  
  
A sudden thought coming to mind, she snapped a twig off one of the trees. In the soft mud of the river-bank, she carefully wrote his name in hiragana. Next to those characters, she scratched the kanji for his name – high mountain or peak. He watched her in fascination, his eyes following and memorising every precise stroke of her stick.   
  
"Your first lesson, Takeru," Hikari turned to him, "When do we meet for your second?"   
  
"It will have to be before dawn," he replied apologetically, "It's harvest season at the moment, and I have to work the fields."   
  
"Before dawn," she echoed, "Be in the gardens of my estate before dawn, Takeru. We shall meet beneath the trees where I tripped and fell," she paused for a minute, unable to resist adding in her most arch tones, "Where you were first surprised by a white morning-glory blooming in the grey dawn."   
  
"But you carry on surprising me, Hikari," he said enigmatically, then disappeared between the pinetrees and was gone before she could protest his more than daring use of her name.   
  
***  
NOTES:  
  
(1) The Tales of Ise are a series of brief love stories, each of which is structured around a poem. You can read some at http://www.barnard.columbia.edu/english/reinventingliteraryhistory/women/genji/ise.htm  
(2) I need to explain this. Obviously, the clouds are a reference to the travelling veil. However, the reference to the sun being pale is a play on the lavender colour of her robes. In Japanese, the colour would be called usuki and mean 'thin, pale, weak'.   
(3) Just Takeru. Peasants didn't have second names until really late in Japan's history. 


	4. Shiragiku: White Chrysanthemum

Kara: The Heian Era is usually taken as 794-1185, if you want a date on which to peg this story in Japanese history.   
  
Thanks to Keri for being the brilliant historian she is, and for being a good enough friend to put up with me in my fangirl moods. Seriously, most people run when I mention the magical words 'Kazama Yuuto'. ^.^   
  
THE TALE OF HIKARI  
CHAPTER 4  
SHIRAGIKU: WHITE CHRYSANTHEMUM  
  
In the dim light before dawn, the garden was something out of the world of spirits. The sinking moon washed everything of all its colour, while the semi-opaque veil that Hikari wore made it seem as if she were looking at everything through a thick mist. Maples rose slim and grey in front of her; the flowers were ghostly imitations of their normal selves; the sky was pale and oddly translucent. Hurrying down the path, she half-expected a ghost to appear from the bushes, or a demon to rise in front of her.   
  
A chill travelled up her spine, as she heard the rustle of leaves and saw a white shape through the trees. For a terrifying moment, she thought that her wild imaginings had come to life, then she realised it was only the peasant. As they had arranged the previous day, he was waiting for her beneath the maples where she had fallen. He was leaning against one of the trees, seemingly as comfortable in his surroundings as if he had been born to the estate rather than the village that served it.   
  
Not for the first time that morning, Hikari contemplated breaking the promise that she had made to him. Any other woman in her situation would have informed her father, and allowed him to handle it for her. She certainly would not have gone after the man in question with the intention of confronting him, only to end up agreeing to teach him to read and write. 'I've been in the provinces too long', she thought in exasperation, 'I'm beginning to lose all sense of what is right for a woman of my station. I should go back to my house and put an end to this chapter in my life.'   
  
However, she carried on walking down the path towards him.   
  
When the peasant noticed her, he gave her a sweet, slightly lopsided smile. The dim light had subtly altered him too - his blue eyes were darker and the shadows lent his youthful face more definition. Inexplicably, she felt her stomach flutter within her, as if brushed by the wing of a bird taking flight.   
  
"Lady Yagami," he bowed deeply, "You came."  
  
Inclining her own head in reply, "I came. Shall we get started immediately?"  
  
He nodded, "We'd better. They want us to start work early today to make up for our holiday yesterday."   
  
With a shock of realisation, "Oh no! I forgot supplies for our lesson! I meant to bring ink and paper and brushes, but it was not easy getting ready so early and I must have forgotten them in the rush."   
  
He smiled at her, "Then it's a good thing that I made provisions."   
  
Curious, Hikari followed him through another clump of maples and saw that he had prepared a place for them to work on a flat rock. Fashioned out of sticks and some hair, two brushes were laid out on it. In between them rested a wooden bowl of dark liquid and a few sheets of paper weighted down by a pebble. She knelt in front of it, while he sprawled next to her and looked at her expectantly.   
  
"Is this fine, Lady Yagami?"   
  
"Did you make all of these tools yourself?" she asked in amazement, picking up a brush and touching the soft bristles with the tip of her finger. Cut from the tail of some animal, they had been bound to the stick with a piece of cloth. It was nothing like the expensive brushes her father imported from China for his paintings, but it had been ingeniously devised and crafted. Somehow too, the crudity of his implements served to underscore how well he wielded them.  
  
"Yes," he said apologetically, "I'm sorry about their poorness. You're probably used to much better."   
  
"I was merely surprised by how well you had made them from such poor materials," she smiled at him, even though she knew he could only half-see it through the fabric of her veil, "Thank you for letting me use them."  
  
His cheeks colouring slightly, he turned away from her to look at the sheet of paper in front of him, "We had better get started. You've seen my painting; I want to see yours. Why don't you show me how you paint a chrysanthemum, Lady Yagami?"   
  
Hikari hesitated for a moment, before dipping the tip of her makeshift brush in the bowl. To her surprise, it came up as black as if it truly had been ink instead of ashes. Remembering her father's lessons, she traced out several, smooth strokes on the paper in the correct configuration for a chrysanthemum. Even to her own eyes, however, it seemed crude and messy - the strokes were unbalanced, and the ink bled into the paper. She knew it was due not to the brush but to the artist wielding it.   
  
"I told you my father would be glad if I were half as good as you were," she said lightly, "Although that seems impossible."   
  
"There's always hope," he replied, "I know what your problem is."   
  
"You do?"   
  
With a smile, he produced a white flower from the sleeve of his robe and handed it to her. It was a chrysanthemum - he must have picked it from her father's garden before the lesson. She stared at it in puzzlement.   
  
"You have never really looked at a chrysanthemum. As a result, your painting does not look like one as well," he told her, "You're painting what you expect to see when you look at the flower, and not the reality."   
  
Twisting the flower between her fingers, Hikari frowned. She remembered her father telling her that the great Chinese masters would spend weeks studying a single flower before putting ink to paper. It would take years of study for them to consider themselves compotent, let alone skilled, in drawing it.   
  
"I understand. . . . I think."   
  
"Good," he replied, "Take off your veil, look at it properly and try again."   
  
Shocked by the impropriety of his suggestion, she turned to him, "My veil?"  
  
"Unless you want to make a study of chrysathemums in the mist," he said with a little laugh, "Also, it has to tangle up your arms, and that can't be any help when you're drawing."  
  
"I can't! It'd be too disgraceful!" she quickly got to her feet, brushing dried leaves and dust off her robes. He rose too.   
  
"Why?" he sounded genuinely perplexed, which he probably was. In this deserted province, he could not have seen too many ladies of noble blood, and peasant women did not hide their faces behind screens or veils. He could not know that it would be almost as disgraceful as stripping naked in front of him.   
  
She struggled to find a way to explain it to him, "Because . . . because . . . you're a man and it would just be indecent."   
  
He did not seem to understand, "But I've seen your face, Lady Yagami."   
  
"That was a disgrace. I should never, ever have let it happen."   
  
"I've seen other women's faces," he persisted, "And yours is not that different. Why do you have to hide it, when they don't?"   
  
"Because those women were peasants. Everyone knows that they have no sense of . . . ." she trailed off in mid-sentence when she saw the expression on his face. The muscles of his jaw were tight, his eyes burnt as blue as the core of a flame, and Hikari knew she had offended him. For a peasant, he had pride enough to rival the emperor himself. She let out a deep breath, "I apologise. That was wrong of me to say. I am sure that your wife is a fine woman, for example."  
  
"If I had one, I'm sure she would be," he smiled at her, his anger gone in an instant, "I don't, but your apology is still accepted."   
  
"You are still unmarried?" she asked in surprise. As young as he seemed, he was still of marriagable age, and she would have expected any peasant woman would have been glad to have him. He had good looks, unexpected talents and a certain, indefinable sweetness that was entirely his own. He would have made a better husband than any for which the women of his classes were accustomed to pray.  
  
"I've never met any woman with whom I'd want to spend the rest of my life," he said lightly, "What about you, Lady Yagami? Why are you still in the provinces in your father's house?"   
  
"My father has not arranged a marriage for me yet," she sighed, "If he does not do so soon, I may have to spend the rest of my life serving in the temple at Ise. I may . . . ." she paused, suddenly realising that she was telling the most intimate details of her life to a peasant. She felt her cheeks grow warm beneath their powder. It had been so long since she had someone with whom she could talk freely - she had felt strange about speaking to Mimi after overhearing the miserable marriage that awaited her - and there was something about him that made it easy to confide in him, "It doesn't matter. We need to get back to our lessons, anyway."   
  
"I'm sure my suggestions will help you," he said with confidence, sitting down in front of the flat rock again, "Now, can I show you what I've learnt?"   
  
Smiling slightly to herself at his little-boy enthusiasm, she knelt next to him, "Go ahead."   
  
Wetting his brush in the ink, he dashed off the four characters she had shown him the other day. She tilted her head to examine them, her veil parting slightly. They were clumsy and childish, but they were certainly recognisable as his name in both hiragana and kanji.   
  
"You need to practise, but that's a good start," she picked up her own brush and painting a few characters onto another sheet of paper, then explained, "White chrysanthemum. It seems appropriate."   
  
"And how do you write white morning-glory, Lady Yagami?" he asked in a suspiciously innocent voice. She turned to look at him and saw the glimmer of laughter in his blue eyes. She knew she should have been offended by what was yet another impudent reference to their encounter in the garden, but found to her surprise that she was only amused.   
  
"Let me show you," she added another three characters beside the first set, then smiled and pointed to them with the end of her brush, "White morning-glory. Or, as most people would read them, Yagami Hikari."   
  
Takeru only laughed.   
  
---------  
  
The rising sun was just beginning to pinken the sky when Izumi saw her step-daughter coming up the path. The past few days, she had woken up feeling unwell, and she found that the cool, clean air of the morning benefitted her. She was sure it had something to do with the child she was carrying inside her. She wished she could ask Hiruko about it, but her husband's other wife hated her. She resented her youth and her beauty; she resented the way Izumi held his eyes when they slipped as casually off her as they might a piece of furniture; she resented the fact that the omens suggested she might be carrying another son for him.   
  
Izumi took another deep, cleansing breath, as she watched Hikari walk slowly towards the house. Even in the heavy robes tied up to her ankles and the bulky travelling-veil, the younger woman moved with the grace of a dancer. In her right hand, she held a white flower, and she was humming softly to herself. She looked so happy and free that Izumi almost envied her.   
  
Only a year ago, she must have seemed the same way to others. She remembered cool, autumn mornings in Miyako when she would wake before dawn to find Junpei still sleeping beside her. She would lie awake and watch the slow rhythm of his breathing and think about their future together. After they married and they would marry, they would set up home together in the city, and it would be as lovely and elegant outside as it was on the inside. She would have a garden full of flowers and a new set of screens for every season. And they would have children to fill it, two strong sons and a daughter as lovely as the cherry-blossoms. Her hand went to her still-flat stomach. It seemed like those were the dreams of another woman, like her whole life before coming to the provinces had been a beautiful dream she had once had.   
  
She wondered with a slight pang when Hikari would awake from her own dream to find herself very far away from home and married to a man she did not love.   
  
"Good morning, Hikari," she called softly.  
  
The girl started as if she had been caught doing something wrong, then turned to face her and stammered a hasty greeting, "Izumi . . . Good morning . . . I was just taking my usual walk. . . . I was by myself, and I didn't expect to see anyone. I hope I haven't disturbed you."   
  
"Not in the least. I wasn't feeling well, and I needed some fresh air," Izumi replied, puzzled by how nervous her step-daughter was.   
  
"If you don't mind, I'll go inside and remove this veil," Hikari said.   
  
"I'll follow you shortly," she replied, "Maybe I can brush your hair for you."  
  
"Thank you. That'd be very kind."  
  
With a little frown on her face, Izumi watched Hikari walk up the path and into the house. The more she thought about the situation, the stranger it seemed to her. Her step-daughter took walks most mornings, true, but seldom before dawn and she never could be bothered to put on a veil for them.  
  
If she did not know there were no families of suitable birth anywhere in the province, she would have sworn that Hikari had gone to meet a lover. Coming up the path, she had had the lightness, the joy, the distant dreaminess of a woman falling in love about her. The grace with which she had walked, the song on her lips, the way she had carried the white flower in her hands, everything about her had spoken of a woman in love. That was plainly impossible, however. There were no men within a thousand ri of the estate, other than peasants and members of her own family. Either would be too shameful to contemplate for a woman of Hikari's birth and breeding. (1)  
  
It was a mystery, therefore - and one that Izumi fully intended to solve.   
  
---------  
  
TO BE CONTINUED  
  
---------  
  
NOTES:  
  
(1) Admittedly, Genji loses his virginity to his step-mother, but that would have been beyond the pale even by the Heian Era's more permissive standards. Genji was a bit of a . . . slut, to put it kindly. ^.^ 


	5. Research Notes

_These are my (unedited) research notes, for those who want additional information. I keep adding to them as I do more research, of course. I really don't know how interesting they are by themselves? _

PEASANTS:

* bloody little information in general. Ack! 

* in a sense, property? They were inherited with estates. 

* clothing (pictures at http://www.iz2.or.jp/english/fukusyoku/wayou/index.htm)

- guy: unbleached, outer robe; unbleached bakama

- girl: unbleached kosode, thinner tie and collar. Since one layer, would be pretty transparent.

- Houses: earth, dung, rice-straw and bamboo. 

SEASONAL REFERENCES:

* NB for poetry, so work into my prose! 

* autumn plants: morning glory, chrysanthemums, maples, cedars, most fruit like apples and pears . . . etc . . . 

* autumn animals: migrating geese, cicada and crickets, dragonfly, rice sparrows, shrike, wagtail etc . . . 

* tanabata: at end of story, Takeru will tell Hikari the story of the weaver and the hunter and their bridge of wings, so cylical structure (research actual story at japanese.about.com). Story runs from autumn to autumn? 

* o-bon: although I doubt I'll use this? 

* others @ http://renku.home.att.net/500ESWd.html if I need them

(The below is summarised from www.taleofmurasaki.com)

COSMETICS

* hair

- longer than woman

- washed twice a year with water in which rice had been soaked (shiromizu)

- daily: combing, applying camellia-nut or almond oil. Sometimes, draped over burning incense.

           combing popular activity for women co-habiting. 

* soap: ground, red beans.

* powder: rice flour, lead-based powder. 

* eyebrows tweezed, pencilled in high on forehead. 

* lips painted with _beni_ (from safflower.) 

* teeth blackened with oxidised iron filings steeped in acid.

CLOTHING (pictures at http://www.iz2.or.jp/english/fukusyoku/wayou/index.htm)

* clothes means of showing taste, because stuck out from behind screens-of-state! 

* twelve-robes or more, but only one transparent one in Kyoto summer

* underrobe (kosode) + loose trousers (nagabakama) tied at waist. Then,

unlined, wide-sleeved robe (hitoe) and

layered gowns (kinu) - usually five layers, but as many as thirty on occasion. Informal settings, top layer was a gown called a ko-uchigi. Formal, uwagi and boxy jacket (karaginu). Finally, train-like garment tied around waist. 

FOOD

* little mention of food in texts: vulgar! 

* drank sake from unglazed, ceramic cups.

* plain ingredients with minimum of cooking and maximum of presentation.

* plain food, but piquant sauces.

* rice: in form of gruel

* noodles of barley flour

* ice: shaved with liana-vine (azamura) syrup.

MUSIC

* women = accomplished musicians

* biwa: strong and steadfast

* so: gentle, feminine

* wagon: difficult, fluid and indefinite

* kin no koto: difficult and subtle! 

* essential to court ritual and public ceremony

* trained by Bureau of Music

ARCHITECTURE

* sprawling, single-storied mansions

* walkways to subsidary buildings

* garden: walled 'courtyard', ponds and little streams. island in pond, reachable by bridge.

* shinden: faced south, staircase opened onto garden and pond

* behind shinden, northern hall reserved for main wife.

* fishing pavilion over pond, streams built to flow under walkways.

* buildings: roofed in cypress bark. 

* shinden: four to nine 'rooms' (seperated by blinds and stands). Central = moya. Outer = hisashi (where serving ladies slept).

MIYAKO (MODERN KYOTO)

* imperial center of Japan between 793-1868!

* planned on a symmetrical, rectangular grid

* great rivers: E, W. mountains: N. marsh: S

* problems: climate and drainage appalling!

* theoretically, surrounded by wall with gates at crucial points. Reality, wall broken and gates for show!

* palace: designed to give chinese air, but probably slightly kitsch to real chinese people? ;)

*  east side flourished and west languished.

CALENDER:

* complex, seasonal

* http://www.taleofmurasaki.com/seasonspage.htm

PETS:

* Chinese cats: pampered pets

* Dogs: lowly status! Ran wild in packs or watchdogs. 

GAMES:

* Go: called Othello now? 

* Sukeroku: simpler, exciting! Uses dice. 

* Cockfighting. :P 

* Kemari: keep hollow ball of deerskin in air, field marked with four trees (willow, cherry, pine, maple.) Taichi should play this!!!! 

* 'Matching of things': shells in particular, matching subtle variations on outside as much as painted scenes on the inside. 

HOMOSEXUALITY:

* male homosexuality: common, blase acceptance? 

* female homosexuality: love poetry = metaphorical? probably not, given similar ones between women and men. women lived in close  quarters, no moral injunction against it. 

FLOWERS:

* wisteria: courtly elegance

* plum: scholars

* cherry blossom: evanescent beauty

* yamabuki (kerria rose\mountain kerria): freshness and innocence. 


	6. A Butterfly's Metamorphosis

**THE TALE OF HIKARI**

CHAPTER 5 

**A BUTTERFLY'S METAMORPHOSIS: **

Whenever he drew, Takeru was transformed. His single, clear focus on his subject was evident in every muscle of his body, every line of his face. He wore a serious expression, although the effect was spoilt slightly by the pink tip of his tongue sticking out of a corner of his mouth. He did not lift a hand to brush away the strands of sunlight-warm hair that fell across his face; it was doubtful he even noticed them. In the morning light, his eyes were a shade darker, like the midnight sky reflected in a still and deep lake. Like this, she could almost forget that he was a peasant. _Almost. She watched him in fascination, glad for the veil that hid the fact that her concentration was not on the art but the artist himself._

At the moment, he was sketching a little bunch of chrysanthemums that she had gathered for him. The petals and stems took shape beneath his quick fingers, and seemed as if they might be picked up from the page. When the drawing was done, he painstakingly added the _kanji for 'white chrysanthemum' next to it, then finished it with his name. He had taken to signing his drawings lately, ever since she had taught him how to write his name. _

She sighed in envy, "I wish I could draw as well as you." 

"You'll learn," he handed her his brush with a smile. The crude handle was still warm from his skin. She did not know why she should notice that, or why it should cause her stomach to flutter inside her as it held a thousand moths. Pushing the sensation away from her, she drew a sheet of paper to her and dipped the brush into the little pot of ash-ink that he had prepared, before she put it to paper.

She would bring them proper supplies tomorrow, she decided. She had resolved to bring him her old inkstone and brushes a hundred times, and had decided against it as many. Although these morning lessons with Takeru had become a part of the daily routine by which she shaped a life that threatened to be formless, she was still uneasy about them. She knew her father would never approve of what she was doing, and she wanted to give him no reason to be suspicious. If she were caught coming home with her painting supplies, uncomfortable questions would be asked. Most of her eccentricities were accepted without question, such as her excuse that she enjoyed early morning walks, but that one might not be. 

"You're not focussed on what you're doing," Takeru observed mildly from her shoulder, "And it shows." 

Her cheeks coloured as she looked properly at her painted chrysanthemums. They were a lifeless collection of scribbles such as a child might do. Beside his skillfully-rendered ones, they looked even worse than they truly were. She sighed and set the brush down on the rock that served as their table. Black liquid pooled around its tip to stain the stone, "You're right. I'm not." 

"Do you have a problem?" he asked, "If you need to confide in me, I promise I won't even tell the reeds about it." 

Hikari smiled slightly, "The reeds, Takeru?" 

"You haven't heard the story about the fox-spirit and her human husband, Lady Yagami?"

"No. Why don't you tell me about it?" she asked, grateful for any distraction from her own doubts and fears. 

"Another time perhaps," he shrugged, then fixed her with an intent look, "We were talking about your problem." 

"It's . . . it's these lessons. I'm beginning to wonder if they're such a good idea, Takeru." 

"You don't want to continue them, Lady Yagami?" he exclaimed, "Your painting is improving, isn't it?" 

"It's not as simple as that," she replied, "It's never that simple."

"Why?" 

"Because my life isn't my own to live," she said honestly, "Because I have to marry well for my father's sake. Because I won't, if anyone ever discovers what we are doing. Because . . . ." she trailed off with a sigh, "You wouldn't understand. You're just a peasant; you can't understand my life." 

"I'm just a peasant, so I can't understand what it's like not to be able to make my own choices?" the question had an acid bite to it, and she knew she had managed to offend him again. That was all she seemed to do when they were together - he had a stiff pride that was quite at odds with his station, "Do you honestly think I choose to work in the fields harvesting rice for your father, Lady Yagami? Do you think I don't want anything better for myself, but know there's no hope that I'll ever get it in this province?" (1)

Torn between shame and outrage, "I . . . Takeru, I . . . ."

He cut her off with a furious gesture, and began to clear the table in front of them. He tipped the ink-pot into the grass, then gathered his brushes and clean sheets of paper together. He got to his feet and gave her a deep bow that was cutting in its politeness, "I've also thought about all of this, and I think our lessons are over, Lady Yagami. After all, I don't need to write to work your fields, do I?" 

She stood, "That's unfair! I didn't mean that!"

"Yes, you did," he shook his head in disgust, "What do you see when you look at me, Lady Yagami, if you can even see through that veil? Do you even see me, or do you see just another peasant?" 

"I see . . . ." she trailed off, biting her lip and tasting the bitterness of safflower. What did she see when he looked at him? It was an impossible question to answer. Most of the time, she looked at him and saw the coarse, undyed cloth of his robes; the traces of dirt beneath his fingernails; the gracelessness of his movements; everything that marked him a peasant. However, there were moments when she would glance across at him and notice none of that, because of a sudden smile, or his focus on his art earlier that morning, or some other sweetness about him that inexplicably made her feel as if she were walking a long and narrow bridge over a swollen river. 

He took her silence for confirmation and turned to leave, "No, I think I see. Goodbye, Lady Yagami." 

"Wait," she exclaimed, without knowing why she did not want him to leave, other than that her life would feel very cold and empty without him. Her hands trembling slightly, she undid the ties that held her veils closed and parted them. The dawn air was cool against her bare face and smelt sweetly of fallen leaves. After their conversation the other day, she doubted he would understand the full significance of the gesture, but she hoped he would understand enough to forgive her. 

Her heart pounded painfully in her chest as he turned back towards her. Apart from her family and a young admirer with whom she had exchanged childish poems and vows of eternal devotion, she had never allowed a man to see her face before. She felt naked and exposed, yet strangely free.

A look of surprise came to his face, "I thought . . . I thought that was too disgraceful." 

She said quietly, "I can see you now, and you can see me."

****

Knowing what she was doing was disgraceful and that her step-daughter would never forgive her if she caught her, Izumi slipped through the screens that divided off Hikari's room. As she had hoped, her bed was empty, although wrinkles in the cushions and bed-clothes showed she had spent the previous night there. She had already left on her usual early-morning walk, which seemed to grow earlier with every day. That morning, the sky had still been dark when she had heard the muffled sound of footsteps across the floor and smelt the faint scent of Hikari's perfume. 

She was used to her step-daughter's strange ways and dismissed them as the restless of a woman too long unmarried, but this behaviour was even more peculiar than usual. She was not the only one who had noticed it too. Mimi had mentioned something to her about seeing an odd picture of geese in Hikari's room. When she had asked the younger woman about it, she had slipped out of answering all her questions, other than to say it had not been done by her father or Taichi. 

That had brought back her own memories of another picture that had struck her as strange at the time. It had been of a spray of morning-glory and Hikari had claimed it had been done by Taichi, but Izumi had seen her step-son's sketches enough times to know that they were scribbles compared to that painting. Hikari had lied to her; she had a secret to conceal. If she could find the pictures, they might hold the key to solving this puzzle, but where would Hikari have hidden them?

Izumi sighed, looking around the small room. Screens whose colours betrayed them as being reused from last autumn. A wrinkled and unmade bed. A perfumed chest that she knew contained Hikari's cosmetics from having helped the younger woman to apply them. A musical instrument that Hikari never played. A low table in the corner with sheets of paper, a vase of colourful leaves and an elaborately carved box. Her eyes paused on the last, and she quickly crossed the room to take a look inside it. 

Careful not to disturb the rest of the litter of papers on the desk, she opened the little box and a smile of delight spread across her face. Inside, neatly rolled to keep them in good condition, were dozens of sheets of paper. She extracted one from the top and rolled it out on the table to look at it. It was a lively, detailed sketch of two children running on the beach, executed with such skill that she could almost hear their screams of laughter and the crashing of the waves on the shore. Gulls wheeled above them in the sky, black specks above a vast sea. She was so fascinated by the sketch that it was some moments before she thought to check who had executed it. 

In the corner, in a surprisingly clumsy and childish hand, was written a single name: 'Takeru.' 

***

**NOTES:**

1. Apparently, Heian social classes weren't that rigid. A peasant could move up to the artisan class, if s\he had enough talent and a noble or an artisan took an interest in him\her. S\he could never become a noble, of course, but there was definitely some flexibility in the lower ranks. Interestingly, the famous Hokusai started his life as a peasant, and - worse! - one brought up by a single mother. Thanks to Keri for this information. 


	7. Tangled Thoughts

_I'm afraid to say that this is another short chapter. I did try and make it longer, but everything I wrote felt like a superfluous addition to what I wanted to do with this chapter. Also, I will be honest with you. I never have terribly much time to write, and I'd rather post a short chapter of one of my stories every week than a long chapter every month or two months. ^.^; _

_Anyway, everyone belongs to Toei. I'm not making any profit off of this. _

_Your comments are always read and worshipped. I'm thinking of setting up a shrine to your comments in my room, where I will offer them Digimon action-figures and chocolate Pocky everyday. *Hint hint*_

**THE TALE OF HIKARI**

**CHAPTER 6**

**TANGLED THOUGHTS**

When he came down the hillside path that led from the Yagami's estate, Takeru found Sora waiting for him by his hut. He felt a sharp pang of guilt when he saw how tired and worn she was looking. He had wanted to protect her, but he must have failed miserably for her to look like this. Her shoulders were slumped, her arms hung heavy at her sides and her eyes seemed centuries too old for her face. The curve of her swollen stomach was clearly visible through the thin fabric of her robe. She rested one hand on it, as if to support a burden too heavy to bear. 

Awkwardly, she hurried forward to meet him, "Takeru, where have you been?" 

"I-I've been drawing," it was only half-a-lie, but he still stumbled over it. He loved Sora, and he hated that he could not tell her the full truth about where he had been. He removed one of his paintings of chrysanthemums from his papers and held it up for her inspection. He knew it was not the best he had done that morning, but it was still his favourite. The ink was slightly smudged from where Hikari had leaned across to look at it and her hair had brushed over it. Even though she had coloured and apologised for her error, he thought it had improved the picture. It seemed like the chrysanthemums were dissolving into mist, like there was no difference between plant and air. 

She barely glanced at it, "At the Yagami's estate? Takeru! What if one of them had seen you?" 

Takeru started, even though there was no way that Sora could have known what happened that morning. He had been turning to walk away from Hikari, when she had called for him to wait. He had looked back at her and had been shocked to see her parting the translucent veils that hid her face from him. She had been even more beautiful than he remembered her. White and pink, she had reminded him of a day at winter's end when the spring blossoms appeared for the first time in the trees. And, even though he had not been able to understand why she had to veil her face, he certainly had grasped the significance of her revealing it. _I can see you, she had said,__ and you can see me. _

He had not known what to say to her in reply. In the end, he had simply walked back to their makeshift table to spread out a new sheet of paper for her. She had seated herself next to him, picked up her discarded paintbrush, and their lesson had continued as if nothing had happened. However, he had sensed that everything had changed between them; that they could no more return to the way they had been than the moon at dawn could travel back across the sky. (1) 

While she had been drawing, he had not been able to keep his eyes away from her for long, or to keep himself from memorising every feature like a sutra he could never write. The curve of her white neck. Her pink-stained lips. The dark line of her eyelashes against her pale cheeks. The tilt of her nose. One part of him had wished he could paint her; the other . . . the other had wanted to trace the lines of her face with the tips of his fingers. 

He pushed the thought away from him. There was no point of hoping for what could never be, and they could never be. 

"Takeru?" Sora sounded concerned, "What's wrong? One of them didn't see you, did they?" 

"N-no, of course not," he hastened to reassure her, "I'm always careful."

She frowned, unconvinced. 

"Sora, please don't worry about me," he gave her a smile, although it was a false one, "It can't be good for the baby." 

Sora looked away from him and he instantly regretted his words. Even though he had not meant them to hurt her, he should have thought before speaking them. He knew how Sora felt about her baby, how she awaited its arrival as other women might the news of a death. No one in their village had been able to discover the identity of its father. Sora had refused to reveal it, and none of the men had claimed responsibility for it as honour demanded. The superstitious among them believed that it had been a fox-spirit who had come to her one night, or even that her dead husband had returned from the world of the spirits himself to father it. 

Takeru knew that last rumour hurt Sora more than all the other gossip that swirled around her. As greatly as he had loved his brother, he knew that Sora had loved Yamato even more. On the day of their wedding, she had been as radiant as the midday sun that casts everything into shadow beside it. He remembered watching her and thinking that he would be lucky if he could find someone he loved a fraction as much as she had loved his brother.

They had had three happy months together before Yamato had come down with the same plague that had cut a swathe through their village. It had been a terrible time for everyone. Every day, another body was carried out of a hut. The air smelt so sweet with decay that people were afraid to breathe. The village was never quiet - the sounds of weeping and ineffectual chanting carried on from sunrise to sunrise. When Yamato had realised he too was dying, he had made Takeru swear to take care of his wife for him. 

He felt new tears prick his eyes, but he blinked them back. The loss of his brother was a constant, hollow pain in his chest, made only worse by the knowledge that he had failed to live up to his promise to him.

"I'm sorry, Sora," he said quietly, "That was thoughtless of me."

"This isn't your fault," her eyes were as hard and shiny as river-polished rock. They always were when she spoke about her pregnancy. Whatever had happened to her, however the child had been conceived, it could not have been pleasant. Anger flared inside him. 

"Yes, it is!" his fists clenched at his sides, "I should have done what Yamato wanted. I should have . . . ." 

"Married me?" Sora shook her head, "No, I wouldn't let you. You don't love me in that way, any more than I love you. You deserve to know what it is like to be with the woman you love." 

"But I could have protected you!"

Sora's mouth twisted in a bitter smile, "Takeru, you could not have protected me from this, any more than a fisherman could hope to turn back the waves that crash against the shore." 

Cryptic as her words were, it was the closest she had come to talking about the conception of her child. He opened his mouth to ask her what she meant, but she lifted a hand to caution him to silence, "You better put your stuff back in your hut, because we need to head for the fields. We're late enough as it is." 

"One day, will you tell me what happened?"

"One day."

It was not a promise, but then he had not expected one. 

***

'All too suddenly, I fear,

the same wind that sweeps

across this rocky shore

has blown away the clouds

and left me sun-dazzled.' 

Hikari set aside her brush to look at her poem. She had painted it in pale, watery ink on light-grey paper, so that it seemed the words themselves were just beginning to emerge from the concealing clouds. There was something comforting about seeing her feelings reduced to the oblique, elegant lines of a _waka. It made her believe that she might be able to understand what had happened that morning between herself and Takeru; that there might be some way out of the confusion in which she found herself. Her thoughts and emotions felt like seaweed tangled together by the waves and cast onto the shore. _

She did not understand why that should be. She knew where she was meant to stand in relation to him, how she was meant to feel about him. He was a peasant. He had dirt beneath his fingers from working her father's fields; he spoke with the uncultured, inelegant tones of the provinces; he was incapable of understanding the thousand intricacies of which her world was composed. He was meant to be as far beneath her as the earth was from the white moon. Yet, she had parted her veil for him and allowed him to see her face. With that, all certainties had vanished.

With a sigh, she drew another sheet of paper to her, and frowned to see that it was one of the drawings he had sent her early in their relationship. It was a graceful sketch of the shore - the waves were grey and still, broken only by a reef of sharp rocks, and black specks of gulls hovered high above them. She did not remember removing it from her box of paintings, but she must have done so and forgotten to put it back in place. Regardless, it would serve her purpose perfectly. 

Touching her brush to her inkstone, she painted five, simple lines of verse against its blank sky:

'My boat rows across a sea

of trackless waves,

and I cannot tell where I am bound -

black rocks rising in the spray;

or a safe but distant shore.' (2)

***

Sora watched Takeru with worried eyes as he ducked into the low entrance of his hut. She knew that he had not told her the whole truth about where he had gone that morning, or any of the mornings before it when she had met him coming down the hillside path. That was unlike Takeru. He was usually as honest and true as divine law itself. She had thought there could be no deception in the clarity of his eyes or in the innocence of his smile, yet she had seen it there a few minutes ago and it troubled her. There had never been anything he had been unable to tell her before this, let alone anything that he had willfully concealed from her. 

All the same, she was not sure why she should be so disturbed by the strand of dark hair on his shoulder, the faint but lingering smell of perfume. 

***

**NOTES: **

  
(1) Another allusion I should explain. _Ariake_ - or the waning moon at dawn - was a common symbol in Heian love-poetry. That is, it was a sign that a woman's lover had to leave her bed and return to his own chambers, or else he would be discovered. 

(2) Based on a poem of Princess Shokushi's. The original reads: "Guide me on my way - My boat rows on across a sea Of trackless waves, And I cannot tell where I am bound - O wind that blows up on all sides."

***


	8. Miyako e no Tegami: Letters to the Capit...

I'm not even going to apologise for my short chapters any more. I'll be unrepentant and hope you don't notice. ^.~

All the characters belong to Toei, not that the company knows what to do with them, as the last episode more than proves. O.o

Can I also plug my new Takari site? It's up at http:  //www.   kbruce.   rcthost.net/ reflections (Just take out the spaces. FF.net eats URLs otherwise.) Visit and be amazed by the pinkness! 

Finally, this chapter's for Araki Kae. ::grins:: She'll never read it, of course, but I thought she deserved something for having to do Hikari's boring track on the Original Story CD. Yawn. 

Takeru's was a little disappointing too, although his seiyuu did the cutest voices in places, which more than made up for it. And I thought Takeuchi Junko was the only one who could do adorable voices. *.* 

THE TALE OF HIKARI

CHAPTER 7

'LETTERS TO THE CAPITAL: MIYAKO E NO TEGAMI'

Tapping the end of her brush on the table, Izumi read through the letter that she had written to Mimi. Her step-son was making the long trip to Miyako, in order to see some friends in the capital and to determine whether or not the Yagami's fortunes had changed. He would be able to deliver it for her, together with the few brief notes that she had written to her family and friends. 

Not for the first time, she thought about leaving it unsent, about tearing it up and forgetting about the whole matter. What business was it of hers if Hikari was conducting some sort of relationship with a man in the capital? She remembered the time before her own marriage - the carefully-composed poems exchanged in secret, the night-time trysts with lovers that seemed more dream than reality, the promises made that never could be kept. So, why did the thought of Hikari having an admirer disturb her so greatly? 

Frowning, she pulled another sheet of paper towards her. It was a painting that she had found in Hikari's box. Her step-daughter had so many of them that she doubted she would miss one of them. It was a sketch of part of a garden - a lane of maples softened by the morning-glory that grew wild all over them. As a painting of a landscape, it was remarkable, but that was not what had drawn her to it. It was the fact that she had walked down that lane of maples, smelt the faint fragrance of morning-glory around her, every morning. It was a part of the Yagami estate in the provinces. How would a man in the capital have been able to reproduce it so perfectly?

Then, there was the mystery of the signature in the corner: Takeru. The strokes of his writing were clumsy compared to the graceful manner in which the painting had been executed. It reminded her of the writing of a young child, not yet familiar with the characters and having to think about how to paint each one. She would have believed him a young boy, had it not been for the skill and assurance of the drawing itself. 

Was he a peasant, who had somehow learnt to draw and write? The thought, which she had earlier dismissed as ridiculous, came back into her mind. She knew that upper-class men sometimes consorted with peasant women in the provinces. There were even rumours of children born from their unions, although those were hurriedly hushed up and the baby itself was never acknowledged by its father. However, she had never heard of a woman lowering herself enough to be with a coarse peasant. She found it hard to believe that Hikari would. 

At the same time, she was aware that she did not know her step-daughter as well as she should. It was not that Hikari was unfriendly or standoffish when it came to her. That fault was her own, if anyone's. In the first few months, she had wanted no-one to guess her misery, and solitude had too easily become a habit. At the same time, Izumi always had the sense that Hikari kept some part of herself hidden, like a rare pearl at the depth of the ocean.

"There's only one way to be sure," she told herself, "I don't believe Hikari would, but . . . but anything is possible in the provinces." 

Pushing her misgivings away from her, she folded the picture and the letter together, and tied a strip of colourful silk around the bundle. It would be within Miyako within a matter of days, and she would be one step closer to solving the puzzle. 

Putting one hand to her aching back to ease it, Sora glanced across to where Takeru was working beside her. He bent and rose between the tall, green rows of plants, harvesting the rice in a regular rhythm. In the bright sunlight, his hair and skin were golden, and his undyed robes shone white. He was humming a song beneath his breath, his voice surprisingly sweet. She had always thought of Yamato as the only singer of the family. (1)

She remembered sitting with him on the rare evenings when they finished their work early. The moon had been full and white in a starless sky, and the spreading trees cast mysterious, rippling shadows around them. While she had rested her head on his shoulder, he had sung old tunes to her and his rich, smooth voice had made them new all over again. A little way off, Takeru had sat with paper spread out in front of him and drawn the night. 

The thought of her dead husband still brought tears to her eyes, although his soul had flown to Amida's paradise many months ago. She wondered what he would say if he could see her now, alone apart from the unwanted child that she carried. Knowing Yamato, he would not have said anything, simply put his arms around her and allowed her to cry. Sora knew that she could not afford to be weak, but there still were times when she wished for a pair of strong arms around her to help her carry her burden. 

As she watched Takeru work, she wondered how her life might have been different if she had accepted his proposal of marriage. He had come to her a week after Yamato's death. His blue eyes had been almost black; his robes had been creased; his hair had been a sunlight-tangle down his back. In a voice that had sounded nothing like his own, he had asked her to be his wife. Even knowing it meant going against Yamato's last wishes for her, she had refused him. She had refused him, and she was suffering the consequences of her actions now. 

She grimaced as she felt the child kick inside her. 

"Is everything okay, Sora-san?" her brother-in-law asked in concern, rising to look at her, "Should I . . .?" 

"Everything's as it should be, Takeru," she replied, the words only half in reply to his question. He nodded and bent back to his work. 

If she had the last year to live over again, she knew she would not choose any differently. It was not because she could conceive marrying another man - she would remain single until the day she died - but because Takeru deserved better than a life spent trying to be his brother to her. He deserved the same happiness that she had found with Yamato; the same knowledge of a bond of karma that held firm through all lives and worlds. 

She knew Takeru understood that as well on some level. Although some of the women in the village consoled themselves with the thought that he was waiting for her to relent and accept him, his unwedded state had nothing to do with her. It was because he was never prepared to compromise. He set his eyes on the farthest star in the heavens and could not accept that it was forever out his reach. 

She had seen the way he had been looking at Lord Yagami's daughter at the poetry contest: he had the same expression on his face that she had seen on Yamato's every morning when he had leant across the bed to kiss her. All that had allayed her fears was the knowledge that Yagami Hikari was forever beyond his reach. Yet that particular star had somehow fallen to earth, and would burn him with its fiery brilliance. She could not let that happen.

"Takeru."

"Un?" he asked, lifting his head to look at her. 

Subtlety would serve no purpose, "Were you with Lady Yagami this morning?" 

Hot colour rose to his cheeks, and she knew she had not missed her guess. She did not wait for confirmation from him before continuing, "Takeru, if they discover you've been with her, I don't even want to think what they'll do to you." 

He ran a hand through his hair, brushing it clear of his face, "It's not like that, Sora-san. Hikari and I . . . . We aren't . . . aren't doing anything like that." 

"Hikari! You call her Hikari? Takeru, even if you haven't done anything yet, you're treading on dangerous ground!" 

"Sora-san, we aren't doing anything wrong! She's just teaching me how to read and write, and I'm helping her with her painting!"

Looking at him, Sora wondered whether she had ever been that naive. She doubted it. Takeru simply saw the world differently from the rest of them. Even as he had grown into a man, he had managed to retain the innocence and simplicity of childhood. It enabled him to look at Yagami Hikari and see her as a woman like any other, while the rest of them only saw the daughter of their lord. 

"Which is why you lied to me this morning. Which is why Lady Yagami is probably lying to her family as well," she heard her voice getting louder, and quickly dropped it before anyone could overhear them, "Takeru, even you must realise that this affair cannot end well." 

"It's not an affair," she could see that he was beginning to lose his temper with her. His hands were curled into fists at his side, and his mouth was set in a stubborn line, "Sora-san, in what world would I ever have a chance with a woman like Yagami Hikari?" (2)

"But you wish you had one," she said quietly, "Takeru, do you love her?" 

He looked away from her, "I need get back to work."

As he bent back to the rows of rice, she felt a little shiver of fear pass down her spine, as if she could see the path he was to walk and knew it as hard beyond imagining. 

"I'm riding to Miyako now," Taichi said without ceremony as he came into his father's study. The older man was sitting behind a low table, working on what looked to be a set of administrative reports. He could see column after column of figures painstakingly calculated and written out in his neatest handwriting. He couldn't understand how his father could stand a life in the provinces, counting grains of rice and barley and supervising the work of dull peasants. It was little better than being a farmer himself! 

He would be glad when their family fortunes were restored and they could take their rightful place at the imperial court again. He looked forward to evenings of sipping osake beneath the stars, to games of shogi and go, to having better company in his bed by nights. For now, this visit to the capital might be the only means of preserving his sanity, which had been worn thin by his years in the provinces, "Izumi and Hikari have given me their letters, so I'm here for yours. I'll go see if mother has anything she wants me to take next."

Lifting his head from his work, Lord Yagami motioned for his son to come closer and extracted a sealed sheet of paper from the piles on the table. He handed it to him, "It is critical that this is delivered to Lord Motomiya, Taichi. The future of our family may depend on it." 

Raising an eyebrow in surprise, "Lord Motomiya? Do you mean what I think you mean?" 

"Yes," he replied, "I'm relying on you, Taichi." 

"I understand." 

DOOOOOOOOM! TO BE CONTINUED! 

(1) Which he is. No-one in the Digimon cast tops Kazama Yuuto when it comes to singing, other than AiM and perhaps Konishi Hiroko. I was so excited to finally find a copy of Negai Kanaeru Kagi (The Key to Granting Wishes). I want to get his new tracks, although I'm ashamed to say I've not see a single episode of Dr Rin.

(2) All together now . . . the Digital World!  ^.~ 


	9. Misei: Grey Dawn

The Tale of Hikari Chapter 8 Misei - Grey Dawn  
  
After a night of strange and broken dreams, dawn had come as a relief to Sora.  
  
She dreamt that Yamato had still been alive and that she had been walking hand-in-hand with him along the shore on a winter's day. The sand had been cool and soft beneath their feet, and the grey waves had lapped and swirled around them. He had been singing an old song to her, but the ocean-breezes had carried his voice away from her across the waves. When his song had finished and the last notes had died away into silence, he had smiled sadly at her and flames had risen around him to consume him. Screaming and crying, she had plunged her arms into the fire to try and save him, but they had only closed around ashes. . . .  
  
She had dreamt that Takeru had been running through the darkness, chasing a fiery star that burnt on the far horizon. Its light had been so brilliant that she had averted her eyes for fear of being blinded by it. Yet Takeru had lifted his arms to it and it had fallen from the heavens to him. As its fire had consumed him, he had smiled at her . . . .  
  
She had dreamt that she had been fishing in the river that ran down to the sea from the mountains. Two times, she had dipped her net in the water and it had come up empty, but she had caught something on her third attempt. It had been a strange creature, half-fish and half-baby. It had opened its wide mouth to wail for food and she had put it to her breast. . . .  
  
Sora had woken with a shudder to see the first pale rays of light coming through the doorway. Another dawn had come, bringing with it another day that she had to survive. She remembered a time when she had looked forward to every new day, when her love for Yamato had transformed the hard, dull facts of her life into something new and magical. She had woken up in his arms to see him smiling at her and it had not mattered that they were poor and hungry and powerless to do anything about it. Even their work in the field had seemed like some wonderful game that had been invented just for them.  
  
Stretching her arms above her head, Sora sat up in bed and looked around herself. As she had feared, Takeru had already woken and had left their hut for the Yagami estate on the hill. His own bed lay neat and empty in the corner, and his old clothes were folded up next to it. Some of his sketches decorated the wall above it; the pictures of flowers and fishermen and birds executed with such grace and skill that they seemed almost alive.  
  
She knew some of the villagers found material for gossip in the fact that she lived with Takeru, even after she had turned down his proposal of marriage. The more malicious had once suggested that he was her baby's father, but one look from his blue eyes had been enough to silence them. No- one had ever truly believed the rumour, anyway. There was something so pure and child-like about him, something that refuted even the suggestion of wrongdoing. She wondered what those same gossips would say if they knew he was with Lady Yagami at that moment.  
  
Sora was surprised to realise that she felt some jealousy at the thought. She did not love Takeru, but she did not like the thought of him loving someone else. It was curiously painful to imagine them lying in each other's arms and whispering nonsense to each other in the manner of all lovers. Sora could almost see the smile on his face as he bent over to kiss her, and hear her laugh in reply, the sound light and silvery like birdsong. Even though she had known that he would meet a woman and fall in love someday, she had not thought it would be any time soon. It had seemed as distant as that day when she would be reunited with her own husband in Amida's paradise.  
  
"And why did it have to be her?" she whispered, pulling her legs up to her swollen stomach and pressing her head against her knees, "Why did it have to be a Yagami?"  
  
---------------  
  
As the first, grey rays of light came through the window, Mimi lay alone in her bed and planned the murder of her husband as she did every morning. It would be so easy to do. She would slip a dagger into their bed at night and slide it between his ribs; press a pillow over his face and wait until his chest no longer rose and fell; drop poison onto his tongue and watch it swell black; wrap her arms around his neck and squeeze and squeeze . . . Even the thought of exile to the provinces did not deter her very much. Hikari had survived it and she had always been stronger than her friend. Anything would be better than life with a sick, old man who saw her as a way of regaining his health and youth.  
  
She shuddered in revulsion at the thought of his nightly visits. No matter how she perfumed herself with incense or washed herself with rice-water, she could still smell his sour, old scent on her skin and hair. It was like a ghost that haunted her during her days and would not let her forget the horror of her nights. When she had married him, she had resolved that she would never give him the satisfaction of a response, but her body betrayed her over and over again. He had more pleasure in those moments than she did - the same sterile pleasure that he had in his other medicines.  
  
Her only consolation was that she would never give him any children, especially not the sons that he so desperately wanted to inherit his name and lands. Every night, she drank a mixture of herbs that was supposed to stop his seed from taking root in her womb. It was foul-tasting and had made her throw up on more than one occasion, but it had worked so far and she had every confidence that it would continue to work until her husband was on his deathbed. If Kannon-sama smiled upon her or if she took matters into her own hands, that would be sooner rather than later. (1)  
  
"My lady," one of her serving maids appeared in the gap in the screens. She was holding a folded parchment that was tied with a strip of colourful silk, "A letter from the provinces for you. It was dropped off last night by a young man after you had retired."  
  
Sitting up in bed, she took it from the girl and dismissed her. If it was from the provinces, it was probably from Yagami Hikari, yet the name on the front was not painted in her friend's usual hasty style. Each character had been charmingly done in alternating dark and light strokes so that it seemed to rise towards and retreat from her at the same time. It had been all the rage in court a few years ago, before overuse had driven it out of fashion again. It had to be from her step-mother Izumi, although Mimi did not know what cause she would have to write to her.  
  
They might have shared some of their most private thoughts in the garden that night, but they had parted without any promises about keeping in touch with each other. They had both known they would not - it had been implicit in what they discussed. There were some feelings that could never be committed to paper, that could only be shared in the flower-scented darkness when all the world seemed a far and distant dream.  
  
Her slender fingers undid the knotted silk and set it to one side, before unfolding the letter. To her surprise, she saw that there was a picture enclosed inside it. It showed a lane that she dimly remembered being part of the Yagami estate - two lines of tall, straight maples softened by the morning glory that grew wild over them. Even smudged by the trip it had undergone, it was an extraordinarily beautiful piece of work that the famous Genji himself would not have been ashamed to claim as his own. It must have been done by Lord Yagami, who had earned some renown as an artist during his time at court, but why would Izumi enclose it?  
  
Frowning at it, Mimi noticed that there was a signature in one corner. It read simply "Takeru". Compared to the skill and assurance that was evident in every stroke of the drawing, it was clumsy and curiously childish. She must have written like that as a girl, before her fingers had gotten used to the brush and the shapes it had to trace. Even so, a boy could not have produced artwork of that quality, no matter how gifted he might be. . . .  
  
More than a little curious now, she picked up the sheet that had accompanied the picture. Izumi had only written a few words and they were not eloquent ones, but they disturbed her all the more deeply because of that:  
  
I fear that my imagination is running away with me and that I have  
written to you for no reason, but I am worried about Hikari and am not  
sure where else to turn. I know that you care deeply for her as a  
friend and I hope that you will forgive my hastiness for her sake. In  
all honesty, I would rather be proved wrong than right in this matter.  
  
I have reason to suspect that my step-daughter is involved with a man  
who is not of the same class, who is as far beneath her as the earth  
is from the sun.  
I would never have imagined her capable of something that disgraceful,  
but there is enough proof to make me revisit that evaluation of her.  
She goes for long walks alone before the sun rises, veiled and in her  
most beautiful clothes. I am sure that they meet at that time; that  
she goes to him in the village or he comes up to the estate.  
  
I also have found many pictures like the one I sent you in her room. I  
would like to believe that they have been painted by a distant admirer  
in Miyako, but the scenes in them are too familiar. I have walked that  
lane almost every day of my married life, rested against the trunks of  
the maples, picked the morning-glory that hang from the trees. I do  
not know how a man in the capital could draw it in such detail and  
with such accuracy even if she had described it to him.  
  
Please put my mind at rest. Tell me that you know of a nobleman in  
Miyako called Takeru. Tell me that he is an artist of such skill that  
he can capture on paper what his eye has never seen. Tell me that  
Hikari is not having an affair with a peasant. . . .  
  
---------------  
  
"I've brought you a present," Takeru said with a mysterious smile as Hikari came down the path to meet him. After much agonising, she had left her veil off that morning, and she felt strangely exposed before his eyes. For a moment, she wished she had brought a fan behind which she could have hidden her face, but she shrugged off the thought. She had taken off her veil; she had shown him her face; and she could not go back to the way they had been any more than she could drag the sun back through the sky to prevent dawn from coming.  
  
"What did you bring?" she asked, affecting a lightness and self-confidence she did not feel, "Another flower stolen from my father's garden?"  
  
Takeru raised a reproachful eyebrow at her, "Come sit down and I'll show you, Lady Yagami."  
  
Arranging the folds of her robes around herself, Hikari sat down next to him. She was wearing one of her favourite combinations that day - Sumac maples. It was a dazzling blend of yellows, golds, scarlet-pinks and maroons, and it always made her feel somehow exotic and glamorous, like a Chinese woman come from across the sea to a strange land. She wondered if peasants ever got tired of wearing the same plain and undyed robes; if someone who was as alive to colour and beauty as Takeru was ever wished that he could dress differently.  
  
"Now, be very still and don't make a sound," he told her. His hands were folded into a little cage in front of him, and he slowly opened them to show her what was inside. On his rough, ink-stained palms, a moth fluttered its large, moon-luminous wings. Somehow, he had kept from damaging it - its wings were still perfect, and there was only a light dusting of white powder on his skin.  
  
"Takeru, it's beautiful," she smiled at him, forgetting her awkwardness.  
  
He smiled back and there was something a little shy about it, "I'm glad you like it. I found it fluttering around the remains of our fire this morning and wanted to bring it to you."  
  
"Our fire?" Hikari asked as disinterestedly as she could when her heart was pounding in her ears, "I thought you were not yet married."  
  
"Oh, I am," he said quickly, "I live with my brother's widow, but there's nothing . . . well, nothing like that between us. Sora-san's like my older sister."  
  
Surprised, "You had a brother?"  
  
"His name was Yamato," he looked away from her, but she still saw the gleam of tears in his eyes before he did, "He died in the plague a few months ago."  
  
"I'm sorry. That must have been difficult for you," she said, knowing how inadequate the words must have sounded to him, "If you don't mind me asking . . . what was he like?"  
  
"He was the best person I knew, and I'm not saying that just because I was his brother. He was good and kind and loving and brave. He made others want to be better just by who he was and what he did," Takeru's voice was unsteady, "And he could sing too, sing just like the birds in the trees. I wish . . . . "  
  
He broke off with a choking sob, tears flowing freely now. Not knowing what else to say or do to comfort him, Hikari put a tentative hand on his shoulders and rubbed them gently. She was acutely aware of the heat of his skin through his thin robes, the fine muscles in his back, his own smell of clean earth and new grass. She felt something flutter in her insides, something previously earthbound and wingless that was trying to take flight. If I didn't know it was impossible, if it wasn't as ridiculous as a Chinese fable, if he wasn't a peasant, if I wasn't a noblewoman. . . I would what? I don't know. I don't know at all.  
  
As his breathing slowed and his tears stopped, she drew her hand away and gave him an awkward smile, "I'm sorry, Takeru. I should never have asked you that."  
  
"No, I'm sorry," he wiped at his eyes and laughed weakly, "I lost your moth, Lady Yagami."  
  
"No, you didn't," she told him, "Look over there."  
  
Against the dark, glossy leaves of the tree on which it had settled, the white moth looked like a rare and lovely flower. As they watched it, it beat its wings and flew up into the grey, early-morning sky. It disappeared over the treetops.  
  
"It's gone," Takeru said ruefully, "I'll need to get you another present."  
  
"It's okay," she smiled at him, "I think I prefer my moths to be free."  
  
---------------  
  
"You do understand that I will have to consider this proposal your father has brought me," Lord Motomiya steepled his ink-stained fingers in front of him and looked over them at Taichi. He had the seriousness and self- importance about him of someone who enjoyed the Emperor's favour and had risen through the circles of the civil service at a dizzying speed. His forehead had a permanent crease in it, while there were premature streaks of white at his temples, "I will not act against my son's best interests, and I am not sure whether an alliance with your family would be in them at this stage of his career."  
  
"I understand, sir," Taichi replied, "When will you be able to give me an answer? I don't wish to rush your decision, but I cannot remain in Miyako for much longer."  
  
"Come back in three days and I will have an answer for you to take to your father," he said, "I will need that much time to think properly about it."  
  
"Yes, sir," he bowed to the older man, inwardly grateful for the excuse to spend more time in the capital, "And thank you, sir."  
  
---------------  
  
TO BE CONTINUED  
  
---------------  
  
NOTES:  
  
(1) Kannon is the goddess of mercy. 


End file.
